Revealed: UK Businesses Are Unprepared When It Comes To Protecting Against Cyber-Attacks

UK businesses are unaware and unprepared when it comes to protecting themselves against cyber-attacks. That is what a new research of IT employees working in UK companies has revealed, with 43% of those surveyed saying that they don't know how to defend their company from a security breach.

Used as an umbrella term, ‘cyber attack’ is used to cover everything from a simple phishing email, right across to a server attack, however, many IT workers have never seen or understand what the actual detail of an attack actually looks like.

A survey of 1,032 IT workers in full or part-time employment, carried out by technology services provider Probrand has revealed that more than one in five (21%) don’t actually know what a ‘cyber-attack’ constitutes.

Almost half (43%) of the IT workers surveyed admitted to being unaware of how to defend their company from a cyber-attack, with one in three (32%) relying on external agencies for crisis support.

Furthermore, only one in ten (12%) of respondents admitted to knowing what their company’s business continuity plan fully constitutes.

As stated by a recent survey carried out by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, this year only, 32% of businesses and 22% of charities have identified breaches or attacks. Among these organisations, the most common attacks were phishing emails (80% of businesses and 81% of charities experiencing breaches or attacks); others impersonating their organisation online (28% and 20%) and viruses or other malware, including ransomware (27% and 18%).

Matt Royle, marketing director at Probrand comments: “The term, ‘cyber-attack’ is firmly set in business vocabulary, and rightly so as cyber threats present the greatest risk of crisis to most organisations. However, it is worrying to discover many do not know the details of what a threat looks like, so have little chance of protecting themselves from it. Where no IT team exists, business leaders are exposed to threats without knowledge of how to protect themselves. Where IT teams do exist, managers are hampered by end user issues, lack of budget or time to truly focus on IT strategy, which includes security."

And he went on: “Business leaders need to take another look at prioritising investment in people, technology and employee training to combat cyber security and protect the continuity of their business.”

Probrand is a leading technology services provider, with a marketplace to save users time and money buying IT, and a market leading portfolio of IT services that help businesses run, manage and transform operations by cutting cost and risk from their IT .